RWA, which used the MF Global broker-dealer to hedge
farmers against market risk, said today that customers with
“any substantial amount” of foreign futures positions received
nothing from trustee James Giddens’s first two transfers of
collateral to clients.

As the trustee continues to distribute assets to U.S.
customers, he is depleting “what appears to be a limited pool
of assets” and creating doubts about when foreign customers
will get any money, the co-op said in a court filing.

“There is considerable confusion in the market as to how
the trustee is categorizing asset pools and account classes and,
moreover, how and when foreign futures customers will see the
return of their property,” it said.

RWA has described itself in court filings as one of the
largest companies of its kind in Austria, engaged in activities
that “substantially and directly impact Austria’s agricultural
industry and farmers.” It asked Giddens to provide information
to clear up the confusion.

The co-op is seeking details on a so-called omnibus account
of the U.S. brokerage’s customer assets held by the U.K.
affiliate’s estate, and wants to know why segregated customer
funds were held by a non-U.S. affiliate and were commingled with
other funds.

Asking for Information

RWA also asked how much of these customers’ funds are
outside of Giddens’s jurisdiction, what he is doing to recover
the funds from administrators of the U.K. affiliate, and when he
might return assets to these customers.

“We are urgently working on responses to all our
objectors,” Kent Jarrell, a Giddens spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Giddens, who is liquidating the brokerage, has transferred
about 38,000 commodity accounts to other firms and said he plans
to sell 330 securities accounts. Three transfers of collateral
made and pending will give commodity customers about $4 billion
of their assets, according to court filings.

Protecting Farmers

RWA, founded in 1994, is based in Vienna. Its commodity
positions, which hedged Austrian farmers against market risk on
wheat, corn, rapeseed and other commodities, were mostly traded
on the Euronext exchange in France and cleared by LCH Clearnet
SA, it said in the filing.

Because few of its positions were traded on the Chicago
Mercantile Exchange, it didn’t benefit from Giddens’s bulk
transfers of accounts and received none of its collateral, it
said.

The brokerage case is Securities Investor Protection Corp.
v. MF Global Inc., 11-02790, U.S. District Court, Southern
District of New York (Manhattan). The parent’s bankruptcy case
is MF Global Holdings Ltd., 11-bk-15059, U.S. Bankruptcy Court,
Southern District of New York (Manhattan).